


Catch Like Hell's Light

by dome_epais



Category: Justified
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:36:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dome_epais/pseuds/dome_epais
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fusion with The Dresden Files (and that universe's rules and uses of magic).</p><p>Raylan Givens is stuck back in Kentucky, and as a wizard, he gets all the magical cases. Starting with Boyd Crowder, who's using his power to blow shit up like always.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Catch Like Hell's Light

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for discussion of domestic abuse, similar to what Ava describes in the pilot.
> 
> This is a retelling of the pilot with Dresden Files-style magic rules.

The thing about the Marshals is: they know about magic. They don’t condone it, quite, but they know it’s out there. There’s rumors enough in the law enforcement communities; there’s only so many times you can investigate a demon summoning gone wrong before it sticks. (The numbers of times is one. What a demon doesn’t eat, it throws around the place like garlands, and that’s just not what a rookie wants to walk into.) So Raylan is a wizard and the Marshals know it. They like to pretend they don’t, but they still push the strange cases over for him to handle.

That’s one of the reasons Raylan’s about to collect himself a shitload of trouble.

Buckley is an uncontrolled dark-magicking warlock. And he’s gotten under the White Council’s radar so far, despite all the shit he has pulled in front of Raylan’s own eyes. Raylan doesn’t have the evidence to call the Wardens and let the wizard’s justice system work this one. And he can’t arrest the bastard by mundane means, either; that won’t hold a warlock long, and there’ll likely be a body count. So Raylan gives him twenty-four hours to get out of his sight.

See, Raylan and Buckley, they have an ugly history, and let’s leave it at that.

The point is, the time runs out and they have a perfectly mundane stand-off. Raylan waits for Buckley to move for his gun. Raylan shoots him – because he is an upstanding wizard, who does not kill with magic. The Laws have nothing to say about killing with guns.

So Raylan’s still fine with the White Council, still got them on speed-dial for when a supernatural case crosses a Law. But he’s got some explaining to do with the normal law, the Marshals who like to pretend that magic doesn’t exist.

With a few battles fought and lost on the way, it all lands Raylan back in Kentucky.

\--

Boyd isn’t, at heart, an evil man. That’s the important thing to remember.

The new recruit looks around the car. It’s just the two of them out for a wild night. Or on a mission, depending on how seriously you view these circumstances. He asks, “We’re blowin’ up a place, right?”

“We surely are,” Boyd confirms, the Good Book open in his hands. It’s night and the streetlights flash by too irregular for reading, but Boyd doesn’t need to see the words. He likes the weight of it in his hands. The solidity.

“Well, don’t we need some explosives and shit to blow it up with?” the recruit asks.

Boyd turns his head, slow and steady, like a hunter moving his rifle. Slow enough not to spook the prey till they’re in the sights. The kid casts glances over till they’re at a red light, then tries to hold Boyd’s eyes. Youthful bravado, proving he’s man enough to stand up to attention like that.

Usually, Boyd makes a point of finding the eyes of the folk around him. He has no shame about showing who he is. If they know he’s a wizard, they’re forced to give ground before they soulgaze and show him what’s in their hearts. Boyd’s found that the ones who know and go through with the soulgaze anyway are generally better than the dregs of society.

Boyd breaks the contact just when he feels the stirrings, because there’s no fun in it if the other person can’t make an informed choice. He squints up at the red corona of the light on the windshield and wonders, “Exactly how new _are_ you?”

But put that aside for a moment.

One thing leads to another and Boyd hollers, “Fire in the hole!” just before he cups his magic in the palm of his hand and chucks fire right into the church. He quite considerately gives the blacks around there a chance to get out of the way, even. Sure, it’s to save his own skin – Boyd has no intention of taking a life, not with his magic – but it’s a consideration all the same.

Boyd and the recruit are a ways away before the kid slams on the brakes on a bridge and chokes out, “What – what – what the _fuck_ was that?” His knuckles might split his skin, his hands are so tight on the steering wheel.

“Here’s an interesting thing,” Boyd says meditatively. “Where’d you say you was from?”

“Oklahoma,” the recruit quavers.

“They don’t have magic in Oklahoma?” Boyd asks gently. Well, not exactly gently. Evenly. With patience in every syllable. “You been with them any length of time and you don’t know the first thing about not inviting anyone inside? About avoiding the eyes of a wizard?”

The kid wrenches around in the driver’s seat, trying to see Boyd directly behind him. “What you talkin’ ‘bout, _magic_? You – you’re some kinda bugfuck crazy!”

“I’m thinking that the government suits haven’t figured out the full nature of our humble group.” Boyd takes up his gun, starts screwing on the suppressor. Keeps talking. “I’m thinking they sent in a snitch who don’t know about magic.”

“I ain’t no snitch!” the kid protests, and – well, one thing leads to another again. Boyd hikes along the road to a pay phone and dials the home base.

“Oh, hey, boss – got word from Oklahoma. New kid’s not in on everything, we gotta make sure we explain about – uh, rules an’ stuff. You know, magic rules,” Devil says, missing subtlety by a few miles.

Boyd considers the car he left a half mile back. “I’m afraid I had to let him go. I’m goin’ to need a ride.” He waits on the side of the road, the onyx in his ring giving off enough glow to read by.

He’s no more evil than a man who puts down a horse with a broken leg. It takes a certain perspective to understand it that way.

\--

Raylan walks into the Marshals’ offices in Lexington with a healthy amount of caution. No one’s said anything to his face, but he knows the entire grapevine lit up like fireworks with the news of Raylan’s mundane shortcut to controlling that warlock. Rumors must be thick as horseflies about his having magic. He’ll have to keep an eye out for the ones that take them to heart.

He walks down the rows of tiny government-pay cubicles, curious about the computers and printers he sees there. He can’t get near the things, they don’t mix well with magic. The only reason every one of these machines isn’t melting down is all the warding layered over Raylan’s hat. Otherwise he’d be leaking power all over the place. Still can’t touch things like cell phones, for better or worse. Plus how he has to write all his reports out by hand.

Art Miller’s the only one who says something out loud, and that’s because he’s the one to hand over the supernatural cases. He and Raylan have quite the civil discussion about how Raylan can’t pull that kind of stunt again, and there better not be fireworks about his being a wizard.

It’s strange being back. It’s not home, not the least bit, but it’s familiar like an adult walking the halls of an elementary school. Everything used to fit, and now he’s the wrong size. Not to mention that he doesn’t have the slightest hint of a threshold – he feels half-naked everywhere he goes. It’s a bastard to establish permanent defenses in a place as impermanent as a motel. But he can’t bear to live with what’s left of his family, and he can’t think of getting an actual place. He keeps hoping he’ll leave before his past snatches at his heels.

This vulnerable, nostalgic feeling hits Raylan hard in the sternum the first time he sees Boyd Crowder’s face in a mug shot. It’s a little distorted – an irregularity in the focus, twisting the straight lines for measuring the prisoner’s height into a dip like a heart monitor’s line. Raylan can see Boyd’s hands holding up the slate with his numbers, and he’s not wearing any ring. Raylan’s surprised Boyd’s got his magic under control enough not to confound every camera for a block’s radius around.

“Shit, Art,” Raylan huffs, tilting his hat up to rub his forehead.

Art looks at the picture with no special recognition, like Raylan’s not busy imagining the last twenty years of Boyd being stuck in Harlan. “So you do know him?”

Raylan suppresses a laugh. “Yeah, I know him. Boyd and I dug coal together when we were nineteen.”

Art shakes his head and keeps on about the details: “A black church went up in a fireball. None of the witnesses have a clue what weapon the guy used; say his hands were empty, then fire was flying across the street. And considerin’ the things Crowder used to do for the military in Kuwait, we’re thinking the term ‘fireball’ is a bit too literal. This one of yours?”

“It’s one of mine,” Raylan agrees without a doubt. Boyd wouldn’t use anything as mundane as actual explosives. He never could stand the thought. Boyd’s blood runs hot, a big fan of the fire element, where Raylan prefers to work with earth if he has the grace of time.

Raylan flips through the file and refuses to let his stomach turn. He knew how Boyd was, when they were kids. He’d seen the man’s soul. He’d pretended that the reckless spellcasting was just about two boys raising hell for Boyd – that he would grow out of the thrill it gave him. Flaming out a church, though. Racists with magic behind them.

He asks, “Anyone die in the church?” and holds his breath.

“No. Just a fuckton of property damage,” Art grunts.

Raylan breathes out through his nose, slow and careful. Boyd hasn’t broken the First Law, then. At least there’s that.

He regrets the thought an hour later, when he’s looking at some kid with a pen-ink-and-sewing-needle swastika tattooed on his neck and his brains all over a car. Because they’d both learned their way around the First Law, hadn’t they? If you need someone dead, they’ll die. The rule only says you can’t use magic to kill them.

\--

Tim Gutterson’s fiddling with something tiny and electronic when Raylan walks through the office looking for coffee. He calls, “Hey – Raylan, right?”

Raylan stops and turns a mistrustful eye on the box in his fellow agent’s hands. “That’s right.”

“You’re from Harlan?” the man asks, a little desperate. “Only I have to drive out there and my GPS doesn’t know how I should go.”

Raylan does his best not to glower. Not everyone has to share his bone-deep grudge against his hometown. He asks, “Why’re you going?”

“Talking to a newly self-made widow,” Tim answers distractedly. He fiddles with the GPS some time longer and holds it out. “Just take a look, see if it’s in the right neighborhood?”

Raylan holds both his hands up like the thing’s a grenade. The warding spells on his hat keep attacks out and Raylan’s magic in, but anything on batteries within a foot is forfeit. “Don’t hand me that.”

Tim grins suddenly. “Jesus, you sound like my sister when someone tries to get her to hold a baby.” He makes another move toward Raylan, threatening to toss the GPS at him.

“Don’t let him near that if you ever want it to work again,” Art says, as he passes by with papers to read. He stops. He looks up properly and frowns at them both. “Hey, Tim, what’s the name of that woman you’re goin’ to look in on?”

Tim turns to his desk, leaning right over the low cubicle wall. He straightens up with the file and reads, “Ava Crowder.”

“Ava Crowder?” Raylan repeats, stunned. “Ava Carter married into the Crowders?”

“Maiden name: Carter,” Tim confirms. He hands the file over. “And she’s officially uninvited to the family reunions. Shot her husband over dinner two nights ago. It’ll probably be ruled self-defense, but she’s probably in danger from her former in-laws. She feels it’s not our business.”

Raylan skims the file through, skipping over the pictures of finger-mark bruises. Little Ava Carter and Bowman Crowder. And no shit she’ll be in danger; she’s just killed Boyd Crowder’s brother. Boyd’s already proved that magical violence doesn’t discomfort him. Raylan meets Art’s eyes for a second and skims them away. He doesn’t like where this is going. Namely, his going straight to Harlan.

“One of yours?” Art guesses, smirking at him. Knowing what Raylan would give to never show his face in that town again. He walks on briskly, ordering, “Tim, you’re off it. Raylan will be happy to cover this himself.”

Tim shrugs at Raylan. “Sorry about that.”

Raylan keeps reading the file, clouds settling over his mood.

\--

He knocks on the door and waits. It’s a nice day, but just being on Harlan soil raises the small hairs on his neck. He doesn’t know how far out his Aunt Helen’s wards go, but if they don’t tell her he’s been in the area, someone else will. Small towns and gossip.

The door opens and Ava’s in the doorway. She’s a bit of a mess, unkempt how a woman gets when she’s not expecting to step outside her door. No cosmetics, hair unwashed and tangled. It reminds Raylan of his own days of being married and seeing his woman without her face on. Although Winona never took a shotgun to him, not even during the divorce.

He catches himself looking at her eyes and fixes on her right ear, instead. It’s bad business for a wizard to lock eyes with a human; leads to a soulgaze. Each person’s inner being laid out and bare, no secrets or polite facades about it. Can be both harrowing and involuntary.

Ava looks like she’s seen a ghost. “Raylan Givens, as I live and breathe! What are you doing back in Harlan?”

“Checkin’ on you,” he says, and shows her his badge. “It’s about Bowman.”

“You’re a Marshal, that’s right. I heard from your Aunt Helen.” She’s looking him over carefully, smile sly and inviting. “You’re all grown up.”

Against his better judgment, Raylan smiles back. “So are you.”

She bites her lip and admits, suddenly, “I used to have such a crush on you, you know that?”

“You were much too young,” he says, remembering those in-between years with a constriction in his chest. The kicking around time between high school and getting the hell out of Harlan, working the mine to save up and running around with Boyd Crowder. Before Raylan’s momma died and this place lost every hold on him. His past has its teeth sunk in him all over again, it seems.

“Not too young now,” Ava murmurs, one hand touching her neck, her hair. Her face goes comical when she finds the disarray. “But I’m not put together! Oh, give me a moment to get on something better.” Then she rushes off up the stairs, calling over the railing, “I’ll be just a minute!”

Raylan shifts his weight on his legs, knocks his hat up his forehead. Clears his head enough to reach out with his magic to investigate the threshold in the unhappy Crowder home.

It’s rotten out and flimsy, barely resisting his examination. He could step in uninvited and keep near all his power – and probably so could anything with magic, human or not. Boyd might have his invitation from his brother, but anyone off the street could cave the house down on Ava’s head. Mundane, without even the protection of a threshold. She might as well be trussed up for slaughter.

Ava reappears, wearing a nice summer dress and her hair up. She walks down the stairs sedately, then frowns at Raylan. “You’re still out on my porch,” she states, voice hard.

“Well, I do seem to be,” Raylan agrees with a bland smile.

Her forehead is creasing, distrust sudden in her tense fists. She warns him, “I won’t be inviting you in.”

At least she knows that much, Raylan considers. He points out, “Going in a person’s house without permission is mighty ungentlemanly.”

She sets her jaw, crosses her arms. “That may be.”

He exaggeratedly looks down at the toes of his boots, six inches from the door. He slowly takes a step inside, crowding her a little against the door where she avoids touching him. He takes off his hat; it’ll leave his magic a little wild, but there’s nothing electrical that’ll take offense. He doesn’t even see a television.

They stand there, door open to the porch, Ava’s confusion becoming clear. “So you’re not—” she starts anxiously. “But you know about—?” she tries again. Then her spine goes iron-pipe rigid and she glares hard at him. “You’re not lookin’ me in the eye, Raylan Givens. Only one never looks me in the eye is my brother-in-law.”

Raylan’s still fixing on her ear. He tells her kindly, “I’m out here on your case because magic runs in families, and the Crowders particularly. Can’t rightly keep your in-laws away without being a wizard.”

Ava gasps like he’d struck her. “But the threshold. I didn’t invite you,” she insists.

“It’s weak,” he tells her. “Barely felt it. You and Bowman, you weren’t a proper family, were you?” He asks it like he hasn’t seen the file or the documentation of her hospital visits.

“Bowman…” She goes a little distant. “He weren’t a wizard, not properly. But he could do a few castings. Nasty ones.”

Raylan nearly touches her shoulder, but thinks better. He suggests diplomatically, “Let’s sit down and talk about it.”

In a few heartbeats, Ava gives a full-body shiver and comes back to herself. They shut the door, for all the good it’ll do, and she turns to the doorway to their left. “The dining room. That’s where I shot him.” Her voice is low and sure. Satisfied with what she’s done. Must have come to terms with her husband’s death the second she made up her mind to cause it.

Raylan leans into the room a ways. There’s a patch of blood in the carpet by the head of the table, seeming for all the world like someone spilled a jar of jam. A few crumbled pieces of plaster, impact points of the spread of the buckshot around the body. She stood right here when she pulled the trigger.

They make it to the kitchen. Raylan has whiskey and ice, Ava some Southern Comfort and cola. Then they go to the sitting room and sit.

Raylan says, “Best start with how you learned about the Crowders’ magic.”

“No, I’ll start earlier.” She shakes her head, lifts one hand to her mouth, swallows away the taste of alcohol. “I’ll start with how I said my own name out loud for our vows. First, middle, last. Bowman skipped his middle, but I didn’t understand, then.” She waits while Raylan has some of his whiskey, checking to be sure they’re on the same page.

Hearing a person’s name from their own lips gives you power over them. Gives you a handle onto their soul. It’s the first step in putting a lot of different spells over a person.

Raylan doesn’t like where this is going. He can see that grimness reflected in Ava.

“I was a good girl before my wedding. Went in with a white dress, you know. We went to Tampa for our honeymoon to see the Superbowl. In the hotel that first night, Bowman set up candles and things. Laid down copper wire in a star and circle under the bed. Wanted it to be a special atmosphere, he said.”

Raylan’s fingers tighten on his glass and he makes himself take another sip, forces the burn down through his throat. A pentacle, a virgin. The spell would power itself. He must have spoken the words while he was in her, nonsense syllables to her ears. Maybe kept the bloody sheets – there’s a lot of dirty tricks you can pull with maiden’s blood. Jesus fucking Christ.

“When we came back, I was… happy.” She twists her lips, sharing a sour joke. He doesn’t know what his face is showing her. “I wanted to stay in the house all the time, stay where I could take care of Bowman. I left for shifts at work, but he hated that I had a job and I quit. I could barely go out for groceries without my heart fluttering, wondering if Bowman would get home and find me gone. When that happened, I got hurt. He’d speak words and for a week I’d get a migraine if I passed the front door. There were rules, like never inviting anyone inside, never leaving my hair or blood outside. He burned my used tampons in the backyard, rather than put them in the garbage. And I never thought about any of that. None of it ever seemed strange to me. Never thought nothin’ about it.”

She falls silent, thinking on it now. She knocks back more of her drink. She tries to look him in the eye and turns her face away when she remembers she can’t. “I avoided speaking to men whenever I could, even my own daddy ‘fore he passed. One time I dropped some money and old Mr. Waldon put his hand on my arm to tell me so. It raised up gooseflesh like razors under my skin.”

That would be a harsh deterrent to ever stepping out on Bowman, then. A disinclination to consider flirting, pain if she was really determined to have a man’s hands on her that weren’t her husband’s. Raylan’s spoken to people who have been enthralled – he’s broken some out of it himself. The ones who cast it always end up dead. It’s against the Third Law, and humans who figure out what they’ve been doing against their will can take things into their own hands.

Case in point.

“Your Aunt Helen heard me screamin’ and took me to her home,” Ava says then, with a new tone. She glances at him from the corner of her eye, measuring his reaction. “She could see what was hanging over me. She gave me a drink to break the thrall and explained about magic. Helped me figure out how it had happened on the honeymoon and gave me a necklace that would keep away Bowman’s spells. He wasn’t strong with them; it took too much to keep up what he started that first night. Keep me under till I drowned. He couldn’t make a new try at it, because I weren’t no virgin, the ways he used me. I went home to him and said he couldn’t hold me no more, but I’d made a sacred vow, so why couldn’t we try being man and wife without no spells to force it.”

She sets her empty glass down hard, a loud noise when she isn’t talking. She demands furiously, “Why in hell did I do that? Fourteen years of my life slipped away without me thinkin’ nothing was wrong. And I _went back_. I figured it was the magic that was cruel, not the man. But without it, he fell back on the old tradition of beating my head in when I did something wrong. And he was going to kill me that way. All he ever did in his life was get drunker and meaner. So I shot him.”

Raylan watches her settle, the anger seeping out of her shoulders. Like the words are keeping her peace of mind. There are things to ask, words to say, but Raylan gives her some time to herself.

That’s when someone starts beating on the front door, hollering, “Ava! Hey, Ava! We’re going someplace, come get in this here car!”

Ava shrinks into the couch at the first word, then jumps up. “I’m getting my shotgun,” she tells Raylan calmly, and strides to the stairs. Keeps it in the bedroom, then.

Raylan puts on his hat and goes to the front of the house, leaves his gun holstered. He opens the door, pulling the visitor up short with one fist up to keep banging on thin air.

He’s a rangy little man, a little beady-eyed and slow to change tracks. He’s got ‘HEI LHI TLER’ spaced unevenly across his neck. He gapes at Raylan. “Who’re you?”

“Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens,” Raylan answers, not moving to show his badge. He keeps one hand on the doorknob and the other relaxed at his side, to go for a gun or a spell. “Who’re you?”

“Dewey Crowe,” he answers, still surprised. He’s not gaining momentum well. “I… came for Ava. Ava!” he calls into the house.

She appears at the top of the stairs, shotgun over her arm. She says, “Dewey Crowe, you and yours had better leave me alone.”

“Crowe. Ran into a Dale Crowe Jr. in Florida, breaking some rules,” Raylan says, testing a little. If this kid knows magic, if he knows the Laws. If he knows that other Crowe was beheaded for meddling with necromancy.

Dewey Crowe’s face is a picture. “He was my kin.”

Oh, he knows. His family’s got wizards, he might be one himself. Raylan gives him a tight, intimidating smile. He says, “Get on out of here, son. And don’t you think of coming back.”

Dewey’s got his pride, though. He sputters, “I’ll be back. I’ll be _right_ back!” He turns on his heel and scurries down the lawn to his car, a sedan that’s seen better days. It has a staff lodged in it, much too large to be practical. It’s about a foot and a half taller than Dewey, that’s certain. If the kid needs that whole thing as a focal point for his first attack, he doesn’t have any business trying to work magic in a fight. He should have had it in his hand before announcing his intentions.

Raylan saunters out after him, calling up a spell and getting ready. Dealing with the earth is heavy, slow-moving like a glacier, till it’s unleashed. Not much use in a quick draw, but handy when you’re pinned down and have half a minute to concentrate and develop something sneaky.

Dewey drags his staff out and starts saying, “Stop right there! Or else – _Vena_ , uh, no, that’s not right. _Venus_? _Ventim_?” He mutters, “Damn it, what’s the one for wind?”

Raylan walks within a yard of this kid. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” he sighs. “ _Terra gravitas obtineo_.”

“Whoa!” Dewey cries when his feet leave the ground. “Hey, stop it!” He hovers, tilts off-axis so he’s almost horizontal, arms waving all around, staff dropped. Doesn’t seem to like it when he can’t rely on gravity going down.

Raylan gathers up the displaced energy, holding it back. Then he dumps it on Dewey, so the man thuds to the ground on his ass. It lays him out and pins him down, an extra hundred-thirty pounds of weight on his chest for the same amount of time he was floating, paying back the force of gravity owed. Not enough to knock the idiot out of him.

Raylan lets up on the spell. Nudges Dewey’s thigh with the point of his boot, presses hard to rouse him. It’ll leave a bruise. He says gravely, “You ever try to turn magic on me again, you’d better have your death curse ready.” He doubts Dewey would have the brute strength for a dangerous curse, even with his last breath. He couldn’t even revenge himself, like a proper wizard.

Dewey scrambles up, takes his staff in a loose fist. Not threatening, just bringing it to his car. He’s all out of sorts. “I’m, I’m tellin’ Boyd,” he stammers, wedging his staff inside and climbing into the driver’s seat.

“You gonna see Boyd?” Raylan asks, solicitously holding the door for him. “You know, Boyd and I knew each other back in the day. Dug coal and drank beer together. You see him, you tell him his old friend Raylan Givens is in Harlan.” He shuts the door and hopes this dumbass kid doesn’t make Raylan shoot him someday.

Dewey screws his courage up and hisses, “I’ll be back for Ava later.”

Raylan steps up to the car, reaches through the window, and smashes Dewey’s mouth into the steering wheel. His teeth cut up his lip something serious. Raylan says, “You see Boyd Crowder, you tell him Raylan Givens is looking for him. You hear that? Raylan. Givens.”

Dewey drives off in a state. He’ll likely pull off the road for a good cry before he has to tell Boyd about what happened.

Raylan turns to see Ava standing on her porch, shotgun out, squinting in the sunlight. As he walks back to her, she says, “I knew magic was in families, and your Aunt Helen has it. But I never thought you mighta got it.”

“My momma, too,” he tells her, wearing that bland smile again.

“Not your daddy?” she asks, quick and sharp.

Arlo’s still kicking and around and making a nuisance of himself, then. That sonnuvabitch wouldn’t have the sense to live clean if he was a wizard; the temptation to break the Laws would’ve killed him just as soon as he could work the spells to do it. Raylan says darkly, “My daddy’s a different kind of strange.”

“You seemed too nice for it,” she says sadly. “From what I remembered about you, when I was sixteen and you left.”

Raylan shakes his head. He doesn’t know if he’s gotten meaner, or if he just hid it so well before. “Magic isn’t cruel, just some folks that use it.”

She keeps looking like she’s going to cry at him. If he’s too much like her dead husband for comfort, at least that sorts out the flirting from earlier.

“Let’s see if I can’t set you up some wards,” he says, trying not to show how much he’d rather be anywhere but Harlan just now.

“You’re gonna talk to Boyd,” she says instead. “You’re gonna stop him comin’ near me, tryin’ to talk his way into his brother’s place in my bed.”

Raylan stares at her. “You don’t think he’s gonna make time with his brother’s murdering widow.”

“I know he ain’t after me to put me in the ground. My last name’s Crowder, now, and he’s set on keepin’ me in the clan.” She puts the safety on the shotgun and leans it next to the door, pretty face all drawn and worried. “I won’t be able to fight him if he puts a thrall over me, Raylan. He’s stronger than Bowman was. A proper wizard.”

“I know he is,” Raylan mutters to himself. That’s been stuck on his mind. Having a human enthralled is against the Third Law. The Council wouldn’t care about a minor practitioner like Bowman, but Boyd is a wizard. It’d mean his head. But it’d mean Raylan’s if he explained any of that to Ava.

She takes a deep breath, smiles with a hint of that flirt in her. “I know where you can find him.”

\--

Raylan walks up toward the steps of an old church and thinks hard about who he was twenty years ago. A kid just getting comfortable with his magic. It was losing that terrifying feel and becoming interesting, like knives do when a boy gets his first switchblade. He didn’t have responsibilities then, just ran on moonshine and coffee and hating his daddy and the town he grew up in. Making friends with Boyd, finding another wizard his age hating his own daddy just as much, was a revelation.

But Raylan’s changed, and he’s got to stop thinking Boyd hasn’t. He blew up a church, for Christ’s sake.

The man himself hops down the steps, arms out, baring his teeth in that way he has, where maybe he means it and just never learned what a real smile feels like. “The prodigal son returns to Harlan, I see. Raylan Givens, look what you’ve made of yourself.” His eyes meet Raylan’s like they’re magnetic.

They clasp hands, step in close so they have to look away or get their faces too near. Boyd rests his other hand on Raylan’s shoulder and Raylan slaps his back. They step apart and assess each other.

“See, this is how you wear a hat, all casual,” Boyd tells one of his minions, “not down ‘round your goddamn ears like you do.”

He’s locked gazes with Raylan again. Raylan can see that glimmer in his eye of Boyd hiding something with a half-truth. He knows Raylan’s hat, must remember the long hours they spent working charms and defenses into it. They’d both needed a way to rein their magic in, and they took the shortcut of enchanting things to do the work instead of learning control their own damn selves. Raylan’s hat and Boyd’s ring had nearly identical spells on them, twenty years back.

Boyd notices Raylan’s attention flicker down to that same ring on his finger, because the glimmer’s gotten that much more knowing when Raylan looks back up.

“Heard you called on Ava,” Boyd says next. “My boy Dewey says he had to run you off.”

“You believe that?” Raylan asks, eyebrows going skeptical. Somehow, it’s the right thing to come out of his mouth after not seeing Boyd in so long.

And Boyd’s smile changes – gets more real, less frozen. “Not if you say it ain’t so.” Something in the way his head moves on his neck to the rhythm in the words – almost teasing, not quite – reminds Raylan of Ava’s flirting. Ingratiating, that’s what it is. “Devil, get us a jar and two glasses. This party’s just for Raylan and me.”

Devil’s beside the church door, looking how most criminals look around law enforcement officers. Like he’s trying to figure out how to teach Raylan a lesson without getting himself put in jail. But he goes when Boyd looks at him, head down and avoiding Boyd’s stare. Must know about soulgazing.

Raylan wonders what Devil’s going to say to the rest of Boyd’s minions about how they’ve been staring at each other. Raylan’s thirty years of not looking people in the eye seem to be up in smoke. It’s got to be up in neon lights that they soulgazed a long time ago.

They’re left alone, standing on green Kentucky grass, still staring. Then Boyd chuckles, low and pleased, and leads the way inside.

Raylan looks around the former church while Boyd pours moonshine out of a mason jar. He suspects he’s witnessing a desecration. The walls are covered in shit from the Racist Asshole section of the Third Reich’s army surplus store. Swastikas overlapped by Union flags. He doesn’t really make an effort to keep the judgment off his face; if he’s reading Boyd so well, there’s a fair chance Boyd’ll see straight through his usual tricks.

Most days, Raylan’s an inscrutable character, but there was a time when he and Boyd knew each other inside and out.

Boyd has them toast to old times. Raylan feels the ‘shine right in his lungs, blinks hard. Yeah, he remembers teaching himself to hold ‘shine down, how to drink properly so he wouldn’t go through the rookie stage in public view. May as well be fourteen again, the way it brings him back.

When he’s cleared his throat, Raylan says, “That Dewey Crowe. Please tell me you’re not the one that’s been teaching him.”

Boyd grimaces, maybe ashamed for Dewey or to be seen with him, but he smoothes it out like it never happened. “Dewey’s a tad misguided, but I’m hoping to correct that with time. He’s only recently come into our gathering and has yet to learn about proper application.”

“Well, he’d better be able to call up a proper spell the next time he tries to threaten me. It’s embarrassing for everyone when he can’t remember the words.”

There’s a beat, a quiet second, where Boyd’s lips do this thing where maybe he _does_ know what a real smile is. Then he asks, “You seen your daddy yet?”

Raylan’s eyes narrow and he doesn’t say much for a while.

Boyd’s always liked having silences to fill up. Raylan’s listening to the words with one ear, but the real meaning’s in Boyd’s eyes. Raylan keeps thinking of questions and seeing Boyd’s answer before he can get around to asking. Is he bullshitting with all this racist shit? Yeah. Is he the one using magic against mundane humans? Definitely, and his conscience has never so much as twanged. Has he been breaking Laws? Just the mundane ones.

The mundane ones are what Raylan’s here to discuss. He turns around in a pew to Boyd in the one behind him, interrupting a fascinating discourse on _the Bible as interpreted by experts_ , and chides, “Come on, Boyd. You don’t really believe any of this master race bullshit. You like blowing shit up with your magic, fine. I can understand that.”

“But Raylan,” Boyd protests, all innocence and wounded trust, “what kind of wizard would I be if I turned my power on the regular folk out there?”

Raylan drills his eyes into Boyd’s. The sadistic bastard kind, he thinks as loud as he can. He knows Boyd hears it because he sets his jaw and glares back, and there’s this period of just hating each other. It crackles in the air.

Raylan says lightly, “There’s witnesses from the black church that burned to the ground. None of them saw a weapon. All they heard was some asshole calling ‘fire in the hole’ and producing the aforesaid fire from his hands.”

“That could be anyone. I hope those malcontents are apprehended with all due speed,” Boyd says virtuously. He’s that kind of intelligent where he can use that language and only sound a little like a smartass.

“I couldn’t agree with you more,” Raylan agrees with a smirk. “That’s why there’s going to be line-up at the courthouse in Lexington tomorrow, and you’re going to be in it. Just to make sure you’re not the wizard we’re looking for.”

Boyd drops the act like shrugging off a coat. Gravely, he asks, “You think you know me? Well I know you, Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens. I know you like to round up wizards for the Council, even though you’re no Warden. I know you pick and choose between wizard rules and mundane ones so you can get your own kind of justice. How much of that,” and he leans forward in his pew, too close to Raylan’s, slow and strong enough that Raylan can’t lean back or else forfeit something. Boyd goes on, quieter, “How much is because your daddy made deals that a human has no business making? How much is because seeing magic used for greed just pisses you the fuck off?”

Raylan keeps their stare going, keeps his temper under control. It’s a hard thing to hold onto, and he’s sure it shows. He hates that Boyd’s won that reaction out of him. Now Boyd knows he can still cut through Raylan’s boundaries easy as slicing a pie.

Raylan stands, repeats, “Lexington, noon. Be there, or we’ll come and get you.”

Boyd cranes his neck – Jesus, they still can’t look away from each other. “Hey, Raylan,” he says, that act back up, plain curiosity all over him. “You think you’d be able to kill me?”

Raylan doesn’t have to consider it. He’s spent twenty years doing that, and it’s never been far from his thoughts since he heard Boyd Crowder’s name all over again. Maybe it would be anyone’s game if they faced each other with magic; Raylan couldn’t say with certainty that he’d walk away from that. But he tells Boyd, “You make me pull, I’ll put you down,” because he’s never had qualms about killing the mundane way.

He walks away, pretending he can’t see that same almost-real smile.

\--

The black priest of the burned-down church doesn’t identify Boyd in the line-up.

When they’re dismissed, Boyd keeps his eyes on the two-way mirror and smiles right where Raylan is hidden back there. Can probably sense him, the way Raylan knew the minute Boyd walked into the courthouse.

Then all the lightbulbs burst for three rooms around them. Computers start smoking, cell phones that aren’t turned off for a courtroom’s silence are out for good. It’s as effective as the EM pulse of a nuke.

Raylan finds his way in the sudden dark and loud confusion, cheating a little by calling some light to his fingertip. He gets to the group of men from the line-up standing in a confused knot. The officer in charge of letting them go has a flashlight; he’s explaining, “Just a tripped fuse or something. I’ll return your accessories and you can go.”

Right. Identifying accessories like jewelry are removed, so a witness doesn’t pick the first guy with a matching facial piercing on accident. And that will mean rings, too.

Raylan waits until Boyd’s got his things and escorts him to the corridor, where there are at least windows to let the light in. It’s strange, walking shoulder-to-shoulder where they can’t lock eyes. Raylan forces his expression to stay neutral as he growls, “You are a smug motherfucker, Boyd Crowder.”

“The polite young officer asked me for my ring,” Boyd defends himself mildly. “Without it, I can’t rightly control how my magic works. And you know how it interferes with electronics.”

“And how is it nothing went wrong till you knew you’d gotten one over on the law?”

Boyd has an answer for that, too, and Raylan can hear his pleasure about it. “Well, I was greatly relieved to be proven innocent. Magic responds to strong emotions.”

Raylan shakes his head and stops walking in the foyer, people milling all around. There are lights on out here, but one or two courts’ll be in recess till things are repaired.

“It’s always good to see you, Raylan.” Boyd goes on for several steps, then turns and comes back. He looks thoughtful, playing like an idea’s just occurred to him. Close enough to lower his voice, he asks, “Is it true you gave that warlock in Miami twenty-four hours to get out of your territory?”

“That’s right,” Raylan confirms, seeing something coming.

Boyd shows his teeth. “What would you say if I made you the same offer?” His face sets into stone, and he murmurs, “Get outta Harlan County by tomorrow noon, or I’ma come lookin’ for you. Does that sound fair?”

Raylan smiles, his cheeks so tight he thinks they might tear under the tension. “Now you’re talkin’.”

Boyd steps backward, eyes on Raylan’s face, with his almost-smile. If he doesn’t stop looking so pleased about them killing each other, Raylan might be forced to become concerned.

\--

He runs into Ava not long after that. She smiles at him, sweet and surprised, make-up and hair done nicely. It sharpens her up a little, like she needs a few things in between herself and the world today. She explains, “I was waiting to get called up in fronta the judge, but then that fuse blew.” She looks him up and down, her smile stretching to something clever. “Come with me while I smoke?”

So Raylan goes outside with her.

She lights up and inhales like she’s not as calm and accepting about the mess with Bowman as she’s been showing. She says, “My lawyer says I probably won’t have to go to prison. It’s funny how I didn’t think about this part when I decided the whole thing. Either way, it was worth it.”

Raylan watches her face, the purse of her mouth, the lines at her eyes becoming wrinkles. Finding the places where her resolve is rubbing raw against the rest of her nature. He doesn’t encounter many people who think about killing that way. About only killing when it’s necessary, and not regretting it afterward. It’s the way he thinks about it, and he respects it in her. She found herself helpless and helped herself.

She goes on smoking and watches him back, getting frustrated when he avoids meeting her eyes and she remembers. She tells him, “I don’t think a fuse blew. Something magic happened, didn’t it?”

“Don’t you bother yourself about it,” he answers, confirming and withdrawing any details.

“It really don’t ever frighten you?” she asks, in an urgent voice. “You’re never afraid that magic’s going to go out of control or something?”

He leans against the stone railing of the balcony with his hips and elbows, looking inside the glass doors at all the mundane humans baffled and defenseless against one practical joke with magic. He says, “It’s like handling a gun. You have to respect it, because it can turn the world inside out if you don’t.” He presses his lips together, resisting the urge to explain that there are rules for when you don’t respect it enough. Even that might get his life ended by the Council.

But he does tell her, “You remember how my momma used to pick things from her garden and bake food into every casserole dish she owned? Half the families in Harlan ate her cooking for a week every year, at least.” His tongue ties up, then, remembering how he’d missed her funeral.

“I remember,” Ava says, softly encouraging.

He slides a glance at her from the edge of his vision, measuring. “She put spells in ‘em. All through planting and growing and preparing them, she’d put in things to ward off sickness and strength a threshold. Help a wife get pregnant, if she was trying, or keep a baby strong if she already was. She spent all her time bringing the right remedies to the families that needed them.” Raylan tips up his chin so he can see the sun from under the brim of his hat, give him an excuse for blinking so often. “That’s who I learned magic from.”

Ava takes a deep breath, like coming up from underwater. Her filter’s smoldering, so she puts it out, and she says, “You could come over tonight and show me how magic ain’t always so bad. I’ll make biscuits and gravy, and some great fried chicken.”

He tries to keep the way he’s drooling off his face, but she’s laughing at him already. Instead, he says, “I shouldn’t. There are rules about US Marshals having dinner with women about to plead to manslaughter.”

She raises her eyebrows at him and puts her pack in her purse, ready to go back in. “You’re a wizard, Raylan. If you want to come over, there’s no power in Heaven or Earth that can stop you.”

\--

“Let me get this straight,” Art says slowly, speaking a little under the diner’s general volume, “you’re a wizard. Crowder’s a wizard. Therefore, you can’t fight each other with magic?”

Raylan’s getting annoyed with needing to sidestep the Laws with mundanes. Art knows just enough about magic to get by, and that’s mostly because there was a section of Glynco trying to figure out how to deal with Raylan, the first admitted wizard in that line of law enforcement. He says, “We can’t fight _to the death_ with magic. Have to use guns for that.”

“So he’s stuck killing you the old-fashioned way. That doesn’t just mean guns. He’s criminal scum, even if he did blow up that church through other means. He’ll get his hands on normal explosives somehow. You should check under your car before you turn the key.”

Raylan shrugs, mind drifting. There’s a lot that Boyd could do to him with magic without killing him or breaking any of the other rules. That touching spell Bowman put on Ava was perfectly allowed, in the Council’s eyes, and Bowman must have learned it somewhere. Raylan’s skin prickles in gooseflesh and he tries not to imagine knives under his skin wherever Boyd feels moved to put them. And that’s only the start. If Boyd finds a creature hungry enough, Raylan will be in pieces before he knows to duck.

Better hope he sticks to guns, then.

Art grins at him. “Think of it this way. We know Crowder’s making trouble, but we don’t have any proof. We have to catch him in the act. And we know exactly where he’s planning to be acting.” He points his fork at Raylan’s heart like Boyd’s drawn a bull’s-eye.

\--

The Marshals are camped out in Raylan’s shitty motel room, calling each other assholes over cards and telling Raylan how shitty his motel room is. He hopes he won’t die tomorrow, because this would be a terrible last night on Earth. Stuck in Kentucky with Tim, grumbling about staring out the window at Boyd’s idiots parked outside, Rachel, primly commenting that it’s a shame betting’s illegal because she’d have the whole pot by now, and Art, who is just enough of an asshole to be a passable boss. And they’re on duty, so they can’t even have some beer.

The old phone rings, a landline that holds out a little better against Raylan’s magical sabotage. Rachel snorts at it. “Look at you, it’s like you live in the fifties. You don’t have a cell phone, you don’t have a computer—”

“At least he hasn’t broken ours,” Art interrupts her. He’s going to have to tell Rachel and Tim the bare bones, at least, if they stick around Raylan long enough.

Raylan gets the phone to his ear and answers, “Givens.”

Ava’s voice comes through, stretched and warped like taffy on the struggling wires. “Just repeating my invitation about dinner. It’ll be ready by the time you get here.”

“Right,” Raylan says – and the call cuts out. It’s not unusual for him. Phones die in his hand once a month. But this time, he hears a dial tone. His phone wasn’t the one that cut.

He remembers seeing Ava’s wireless phone set up; a little too delicate to have around wizards. And hers died.

Raylan sighs. “Boyd’s at Ava’s.”

Art looks up at him, doesn’t even ask how he knows. He sighs, just like Raylan did. “Well, shit.”

\--

“We know Tweedledee and Tweedledum are out there,” Art says, as they saddle up and ride out. “We’ll deal with them. Raylan, just get to Ava’s. If we need something, we’ll—shit, we’ll use morse code or flares or something. Go.”

All three of them get Raylan into his car, and go to Tim’s to follow behind. They don’t make it before they take fire.

But Raylan has to get out of there and assume the Marshals will know what to do.

It’s not a short drive, and it doesn’t take that long for Raylan to notice the beat-up grey sedan sneaking around with its headlights off. In between trees there are flashes of moonlight, and Raylan recognizes Dewey Crowe’s car. When he’s coming up on the house, he gets ahead of them, pulls over, and climbs out, cursing the delay.

They stop behind his car. He walks up to the driver’s side to Dewey, Devil in the passenger seat. They shift a little under his stare. Raylan gets in the back, shoving Dewey’s ridiculous staff over till it’s wedged against the window’s frame. “So, tell me. What’s goin’ on?”

They’re quiet. Guilt-quiet.

Raylan puts his first two fingers together, gathers enough energy at the tips to make a light. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you guys.”

Devil thinks he’s the smart one. “Ain’t nothing goin’ on, alright?”

Raylan points his fingers at the rear-view mirror. He uses fire and force, but overshoots it a little. The windshield gets a hole.

The men scream at the noise and heat as it passes. Then Devil, mundane and a little more nervous around magic, says, “He just wants to have a word with you, is all.”

“Told me he was gonna shoot me,” Raylan objects.

Dewey whines, “Then what’re you asking us for, asshole?”

Raylan cold-cocks him. He’s running out of patience, but that doesn’t mean he’s gonna attack Dewey with magic first. Threatening is one thing, of course.

At least Boyd won’t have these two for back-up. Levels the playing field a little.

\--

Ava opens the screen door for him as he’s walking up the stairs, face crumpled up. Her voice is still strong as she begins, “I swear, Raylan—”

“I know,” he tells her, climbing toward the door with a purpose.

She says, “Come inside,” oddly formal.

He nods at her. The threshold isn’t much, doesn’t affect most of his magic to keep him out. But entering with an invitation makes a difference, and if Boyd’s in there with all his power, Raylan doesn’t have to face him with any less of his own. He ducks inside.

Boyd’s there in the dining room, gun trained on the doorway when Raylan appears in it, Ava just behind. “Raylan,” he greets pleasantly.

“Boyd,” Raylan answers. He pulse picks up like it will when a gun’s pointed at you.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to remove your hat,” Boyd says. “Can’t have you playing tricks on me here.”

Raylan doesn’t move. “What with you having your ring, that hardly seems sporting of you.”

Boyd’s speaking with that smoothness, that false teeth-bared smile. “Well, Raylan, if I were hosting this meeting, I’d decide to keep it on. But seein’ as we’re imposing on my sister-in-law, I guess I’ll have to play fair.” Holding the gun as steady as he can, Boyd works the ring off his right third finger. He lifts it up with his left. Watching Raylan, he says, “Ava. Come here and take this offa me. Get Raylan’s hat on your way to the porch and leave them both there.”

She steps into the dining room, movements jerky and almost uncoordinated with hatred. When she goes to pluck the ring away, he closes his hand and grins harder, looking at her with all his heavy, aggressive attention.

“Now, don’t go doing something unwise, like throwing this out into the holler hard as you can. I can see those thoughts in your eyes, Ava Crowder, and you’ll resist them. Because I can work magic without this ring and then you’ll find out how _important_ it is to have this ring controlling it.”

Her face is away from Raylan, but she locks up at her married name and makes a cornered animal noise at the threat of magic toward her. Whatever he sees in her, Boyd opens his hand, and Ava starts jerkily toward the front door.

“Raylan’s hat,” Boyd reminds her delicately.

She doesn’t look at Raylan, just holds out her other hand.

Raylan takes off his hat and passes it over, feeling the cloak of shield-spells and mesh netting holding him in lift off like spider-webs, abruptly insubstantial. He murmurs, “Don’t throw it,” to her, and if she hears it, there’s no sign.

She disappears for a moment, and Boyd sets the gun down on the table. He gestures to the chair at the other end of the table from his own. Raylan sits down, slow and apprehensive, moving like molasses as though taking ten seconds instead of seven will make the difference in the Marshals arriving before shots are fired.

Ava’s back in the doorway. Boyd says, “Ain’t there something you can do in the kitchen?” like it’s not a question. So she goes.

That leaves Raylan looking at Boyd over a chicken dinner. Raylan hasn’t shaved clean in a week, leaving him scraggly and too open without his hat. He can see small impact points in the wall over Boyd’s shoulders, where shotgun pellets missed Boyd’s brother not a whole four days ago. Raylan didn’t look to see if Ava got that bloodstain out of the carpet.

Boyd, never one for tense silences, talks about the dinner and invites Raylan to eat, like reaching for his plate doesn’t put his hand within inches of that gun. Then he turns to how it was when Raylan killed Buckley. Was there food like this. What had Raylan carried. How did he know when to pull.

Raylan picks up a chicken leg with his left hand, greasing up his fingers. He leaves his right down at his hip. He can see how this will go. He speaks promptly, casually. He’s more relaxed, knowing he’s quick, knowing he can put a bullet in Boyd Crowder before he gets one himself. He answers that his gun was holstered, that Buckley pulled first.

There’s no way out of this. It’s trundling forward, inevitable, like they’ve been on the tracks to this point ever since they climbed side-by-side into a mine cart. They’re watching each other so hard it might open wounds. Boyd can’t let Raylan keep after him. Raylan can’t leave him alone. They’re at an impasse.

Boyd’s smiling, arranging details like he’s planning a wedding. Boyd’s gun on the table, Raylan’s in his holster, Boyd pulls first. They see who’s still standing at the end.

Raylan can feel his expression hardening like wax. He’s never noticed every flicker of Boyd’s body before, never tried so hard. His nerves are pulled taut like a bowstring, and any second he’ll see Boyd start to move. He’ll probably see the decision in his eyes.

Boyd smiles when it’s all settled out, raises his voice. Doesn’t break the tension none. “Should we just do us a shot of Jim Bean? Just for old times’ sake? Ava, bring—”

A shotgun pumps and Ava steps around the corner, almost over Raylan’s shoulder. Shotgun fixed on the center of Boyd’s mass. “Do you know what Bowman said when he looked up and saw me with his deer rifle?” she asks him.

“God damn, woman,” Boyd says, not all that upset, “you only shoot people when they’re eating dinner?”

“He had his mouth stuffed full’a sweet potatoes. He said, ‘What’re you doing with that?’” Her voice is high and strained, her knuckles white on the barrel and stock. Her eyes are going wild and desperate.

Boyd loses his smile, watches the wide open bore of Ava’s shotgun pointed at him.

Raylan looks hard at Boyd, with an uncanny _knowing_ of what is about to happen.

Boyd’s hand moves. Raylan brings out his gun, squeezes the trigger before Boyd gets a grip. Boyd’s chair tumbles over and Ava nearly knocks herself down when she shoots the wall, a new bloom of scattered holes in her wallpaper.

Raylan gets around the table, kneels by Boyd’s shoulder. His blood is mixing with his brother’s on the carpet, but his eyes are open. He’s breathing. There’s a lot of blood, but Raylan missed the heart.

“You really, you did it, you did, you did it,” Boyd stutters out, struggling for it.

“I’m sorry. But you called it.” Raylan stays over him, but he tells Ava, “Get out of this house and get an ambulance down here.” He hears her go sprinting without putting on her shoes, heavy thuds on the planking of the porch and then swallowed by the grass.

Boyd’s swallowing, over and over, but Raylan doesn’t see blood in his mouth. He presses his palm into the wound, a small ragged hole, and there’s no sucking wind. Missed the lungs, too. But there’s a knot of arteries and veins, and if Ava doesn’t hurry…

Boyd’s frowning at him, and it’s like they’ve never set eyes on each other.

Raylan’s applying pressure, but blood’s seeping through the spaces of his fingers. He says, “It’s a toss-up whether you live, I’m guessing. If you’ve got a death curse in mind, maybe hold onto it till you’re sure you’re slipping.”

“That why, you sent,” Boyd chokes out.

Raylan loosens up, just a little. Softens his scowl into a frown. “Didn’t want you puttin’ anything worse on her. She’s borne enough from you Crowders.”

Boyd seems paralyzed by the pain and the blood and the fear, but then his right hand reaches clumsily and wraps around Raylan’s wrist, keeping his palm to his chest. A warmth suffuses Raylan’s hand, his magic mixing in with Boyd’s.

“I’m no good with healing,” Raylan huffs, but he takes Boyd’s power in and tries some aimless poking around. He doesn’t have any words to direct it, and he wishes one of them had their focus point. He tells Boyd so: “Should have kept that goddamn ring,” he says, grinning with all his teeth. That’s picked up from Boyd.

Boyd’s parts do whatever they want to with the power Raylan pushes into them. He can only assume they’ll use it to stitch their torn parts together, but what the hell does he know. Maybe it’s completely the wrong thing to do. Maybe Boyd will get to the hospital and the doctors will have to cut everything up again to get to the bullet.

But maybe he’ll get to the hospital.

Boyd says, “You had my, my Name, once,” like that does them any fucking good _now_. Knowing how a person speaks their name binds them to you – but then time passes. Boyd doesn’t say his name the way he did at nineteen. That’s the thing about growing up.

“Names change,” Raylan tells him, stern and pissed off all of a sudden. What right did Boyd have to plan all this and then be the one on the floor? He pushes down harder, can feel the convulsions as Boyd breathes. There’s a curious blankness over his face, and Raylan supposes that’s what his own shows, too.

Killing when it’s necessary. Not regretting it afterward. Wizards live a long time, and if Raylan goes another four hundred years, he’ll remember his icy certainty that Boyd Crowder meant to put him in the ground tonight. He’ll remember it every day.

That’s when the sirens start up, distant and echoing in the holler. Ava comes back, panting and dirty up to her shins, nice pink dress mottled with grass stains where maybe she fell. She stands over their tableaux, Boyd not making any more sounds, Raylan watching him realize he’s going to live.

Her voice is loud in the quiet. “Before I left, you told him you’re sorry. Why’d you say it like that?”

“Boyd and I dug coal together,” he says, and that’s about all the claim they each hold over the other.

\--

In the rush to tape Boyd up and get him into that ambulance, Raylan goes outside. There’s his hat, sitting on the nice cushioned bench on the porch, safe and waiting for him. He puts that on.

The ring’s not with it. Ava must have thrown it out, after all.

Raylan steps onto the grass, blocking out the urgent voices and the bright flashing lights. He tries to feel, to spread out a little, looking for the magical touch of a thing deeply embedded in Boyd’s power. He paces and paces and finds it fifty yards away. He picks it up in two fingers, and it’s heavy and wrought out of iron. The black stone glimmers up at him in the starlight.

He goes back. They’re just wheeling Boyd out, half-conscious and breathing from those bag-and-mask setups. He has them pause, takes Boyd’s right hand, and slides the ring on.

The paramedic scolds him, “Take that thing away. If his heart stops and we have to defibrillate, that ring might give him a burn. No reason to risk it.”

“It won’t,” Raylan tells her. “This has to be left on him. I’m in earnest, now: if you take it off, the whole hospital will have a power outage.”

She stares at him, then asks, “Aren’t you the one that shot him?”

“Are you hearin’ me?” Raylan demands. “Write that down on his papers or something. Don’t take that ring from him till he’s released and healthy.”

Art comes up to them, looking like he’s been in a gunfight and still has a long night to go. He tells the paramedic, “Write it down. We’ll follow up with his doctors or guards or whoever’s in charge of him tomorrow.” When they’re loading Boyd in, Art puts his hand on Raylan’s arm and leads him back to sit on the porch’s bench. He says, “No magic, huh?”

“Bullets. The old-fashioned way,” Raylan confirms.

Art blows out a breath, pushes his Marshals ball cap up his bald head and rubs there. “Okay, I’m deferring to your expertise, here. He needs that ring for what, exactly?”

Raylan, incredibly, feels almost disloyal giving away Boyd’s secrets. “It’s like my hat. Keeps his magic in, no matter what he’s feeling. Otherwise he might take out every life support machine _and_ the back-up generator, just by accident.”

“And he won’t use it to break out the minute he wakes up?”

“So take it from him before he’s able to walk. They’ll have trouble hooking him up to a heart monitor as it is, Art. He’s not going to be skipping around anytime soon.” Raylan stops and hears his voice ringing too loud.

Art’s watching him. “I understand your being upset, son. That’s nothing strange. But you stay here until someone has your full statement, and you don’t come into the office before you have the weapons discharge report in your hand.”

Raylan nods. Art goes off, and Tim shows with his notepad. “So,” he starts, running ragged and losing the rush of action, “I shot a guy, too. Wanna write our reports together?”

During all the statements and the documenting, Raylan leaves Ava to herself, shivering in her mother’s embroidered quilt and unwilling to move off the top step of her staircase. She’s just sitting and speaking, looking ready to face a new round of enquiries about her reasoning. Raylan can see it all through her like coal veins: everything was justified.


End file.
